Parental loss is one of the most distressing forms of trauma that children and adolescents can experience. Grieving young people are more likely to experience mental health challenges, from anxiety to PTSD, prolonged grief and suicide. Early bereavement also affects social outcomes, including employment and education.
A 2026 study found that parental loss doubled young people’s risk of developing mental health disorders.
Parental loss is often the first step in a series of escalating mental health challenges and intensifying emotional distress. This means that children experiencing parental loss should be recognised early, and connected with mental health and social support.
It’s also crucial to recognise the impact of parental loss on later mental health issues. Overlooking the role of parental loss can act as a barrier to effective treatment, leaving unresolved trauma that may continue to precipitate and maintain psychological distress.
What Are the Different Forms of Parental Loss?
Parental loss happens when a young person experiences the loss of a parent from their daily life. The most distressing form of parental loss is the death of a parent, particularly at an early age. But parental loss can also occur when parents separate, when a child lives with only one parent or when a parent is incarcerated within the prison system.
While all forms of parental loss are linked to mental health disorders, they differ in the character and severity of their impact. This means that’s its important to understand the individual effects of each form of parental loss, as well as parental loss in general.
How Common Is Parental Loss Among Young People?
Parental loss is more common in some communities, societies and regions than others. A 2026 study among children and adolescents living in Australia found that, at 17 years:
- 0.3% had a parent in custody
- 2.5% had experienced the death of a biological parent
- 31.8% had separated parents
- 37.8% were not living with both biological parents
Another study found that 2.6% of Swedish, Finnish, and Danish children had experienced the death of a parent. Almost a third of young people under the age of eighteen in the US have experienced a sudden bereavement, a prevalence much higher than other traumas, such as witnessing a serious injury or experiencing a major disaster.
International research shows that disadvantaged young people, including those with economic disadvantage and with a minority or Indigenous background, are at the highest risk of bereavement.
How Does Experiencing the Death of a Parent Affect Young People’s Mental Health?
Research shows that experiencing the death of a parent has the most harmful impact on a young person’s mental health. In the aforementioned 2026 study, 28.8% of children and adolescents whose biological parent had died were now living with a mental health disorder, compared to 10.8% of those who had not experienced parental loss.
Bereavement is often described as the most distressing form of trauma that a young person can experience. The way that children cope with and are impacted by grief varies through different developmental stages, with research suggesting that younger children’s mental health is most profoundly affected. While there are multiple different models of grief that attempt to explain young people’s responses to bereavement, they all point towards a complex, broad impact on different aspects of a child’s life.
Studies exploring the impact of a parent’s death on a young person’s mental health and social experiences have found that parental loss or the death of a close person during childhood is associated with:
- separation anxiety
- depression
- conduct problems
- substance use
- functional impairment
- incarceration in the prison system
- poorer educational attainment and employment outcomes
It’s also a stronger predictor of poor school outcomes than any other form of trauma.
Losing a parent only intensifies the challenges that young people already face. Children and adolescents are already vulnerable to anxiety, risk-taking behaviours and other mental health symptoms as they navigate a complex outside world while undergoing rapid inner processes of learning, development and change. Young people, especially younger children, often also lack the tools to conceptualise and process death and loss, which can complicate grieving processes.
Parental Loss Through Separation
Young people can also experience parental loss when their parents separate or divorce. The degree of loss they experience will depend on the circumstances of the separation and how much contact they have with either parent. In parental separations where a young person ceases to have any communication with one parent, they may undergo a grieving process similar to the death of a parent, especially when their developmental age limits their understanding of what’s going on.
In the same 2026 study, researchers found that the prevalence of mental health disorders among children who have experienced parental separation is 20.2%, similar to the children whose parent is in custody (21.9%) and almost double that of children who haven’t experienced parental loss.
Childhood Parental Loss and the HPA-Axis
We know that different kinds of stress during childhood, including parental loss, impact our mental health as adults. There are lots of different mechanisms at play in this connection, and we can look at it through various lenses. For example, one mechanism may involve emotional skills and learning, whereby stress disrupts normal developmental processes such as emotional regulation, making emotional instability more likely later on in life.
Another lens is the biological and neurological perspective, where we can see how stress causes changes in the way the brain and body are structured and develop, impacting how they function during adulthood. Researchers have often focused on the role of the HPA axis in this process – a complex system of brain signals and hormones that regulates our responses to stress. The hormone cortisol – which calms the body down – is central to HPA function.
Dysregulated HPA function can mean we overreact to perceptions of threat, experiencing frequent or constant stress arousal that can be hard to calm down. Or it might mean that our stress response system is suppressed, leading to fatigue, a suppressed immune system or low mood.
In the context of parental loss, research has found that adults who experienced the death of a parent during childhood, or prolonged parental separation, have increased cortisol responses. Increased cortisol responses are associated with numerous mental and cognitive health challenges, from irritability to anxiety and memory inhibition.
They also found that parental care moderated the effect of parental loss on the cortisol response. This means that receiving appropriate support, warmth and care after losing a parent is crucial in protecting young people from the long-term mental health consequences of their trauma.
What Barriers Do Young People Face in Accessing Support for Parental Loss?
Despite the lifelong mental health and social consequences of bereavement during childhood, the needs of grieving young people are often overlooked. Adults are often afraid of speaking clearly and directly about death and grief, leaving children with unanswered questions that complicate their grieving processes.
Young people also describe many barriers to accessing support, including:
- long waitlists
- treatment fees
- not knowing where to access support
- a lack of knowledge about grief among teachers, school staff and healthcare providers
Today, there is still a widespread lack of mechanisms for the identification and referral of young people and families to specialist services. There are also few examples where programs addressing grief are integrated into the usual care for families or schools or other community service providers, although this would help reduce the long term harm caused by parental loss. Unfortunately, young people have to bear much of the harm caused by these omissions.
What Support Is Available for Young People Who Have Experienced Parental Loss?
There are different types of support that can protect the mental health of young people who have experienced parental loss. Two of the most important are psychological therapies and family-based support programs.
Psychological Therapies
Several types of psychotherapy have been shown to reduce symptoms of prolonged grief, anxiety and depression in bereaved young people. One of the most established is cognitive-behavioural therapy, a talking therapy that supports young people to develop new narratives, identify unhelpful thoughts, reduce avoidance and maintain social connections and positive routines.
Young people may also benefit from trauma-focused therapies that reduce post-traumatic stress symptoms caused by a sudden loss.
Family-Based Interventions
Family-based interventions offer support for both grieving children, the surviving parent and other relatives who are part of the family system. They offer psychoeducation about grief, focusing on different skills including memory making, positive parenting and repairing relationships. Modules may also address positive coping skills, building self-esteem and adaptive emotional expression.
The Wave: Transformative Mental Health Support for Young People
The Wave offers specialist mental health spaces for young people and families. We take a whole-person, social approach to mental health support, emphasising the role of families, interpersonal relationships and past experiences in shaping how young people think, feel and act today.
We support young people to grow in self-confidence, develop life skills and explore new life paths and lay the foundations for a resilient, fulfilling future.
We offer two- to three-week family intensives for families impacted by family trauma, including parental loss, emphasising the well-being of all family members.
If you’re interested in finding out more about our programs, get in touch today.
